


Memory's Thrall

by VivWiley



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Skinner/Scully friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivWiley/pseuds/VivWiley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skinner reflects on an anniversary, and receives some unexpected help</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory's Thrall

There was one thing he hadn't told Mulder about that day.

It had been raining. A more poetic man might have noted that it was raining like the gods were weeping, but what Skinner remembered most was simply that he had been wet and cold and tired and his boots had felt like there were small lakes inside each of them and they still had miles to go on recon.

Miles to go, and then no more miles.

The ambush had come out of nowhere, and everyone had fallen. Fallen. He shook his head grimly. It sounded like a stand of trees blown over in a strong wind.

The reality, of course, hadn't been nearly that peaceful. They had all died. Screaming and clutching at the wounds that tore their flesh and rendered them into grotesque cartoon characters: blood spurting in geysers and bone showing through and shapes and colors that you just didn't want to think about. Except that it was better than thinking about what was happening to your body, and then you could simply no longer think or feel or do anything at all, but die.

But he hadn't died.

He hadn't died exactly 26 years ago on this day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

"Another scotch, Stan."

He wasn't drunk. Wasn't even slightly affected yet, but there didn't seem to be much else to do but drink.

Stan brought him the scotch and gave him a long look, clearly getting ready read him a lecture. But reading some quietly held menace in the AD's dark eyes, he contented himself with simply slamming the glass down a little harder than necessary and stalking away from the booth in the back with a disapproving 'hmph.'

The bar in the early afternoon light was not quite the dark, sullen place Skinner needed to brood, but it was near his apartment, and familiar, and he was in no mood to go exploring the yuppie joints of DC. This place had the advantage of being known and nearly deserted.

As always, he had requested this day off, well in advance. The beauty of "personal" time was that he didn't have to make any explanations for taking the leave. At least on paper. He knew that his unaccustomed absence from the Hoover Building would cause a minor stir and odd speculation, but he'd be damned if he could care about it.

There had been a time when he would try to let this day pass unremarked. Unnoticed. Unremembered.

Except there was simply no way of not remembering this day, and so he'd developed the annual ritual of simply taking the day off -- knowing he would not be fit company for either man or beast until the 24 hours of his death's anniversary had passed.

He refused to develop any other specific ceremony for the occasion. It was bad enough that this day made him so itchy inside his own skin that he couldn't assert his normal self-discipline and simply go into the office as usual -- to function as an Assistant Director of the FBI. 

But, Skinner was, above all else, a practical man, and he'd come to realize that there was simply no point in trying to treat this day like any other. So he took it off.

Thus it was that he found himself in a bar, drinking scotch at 2 in the afternoon in the middle of a week.

For a long time he simply allowed himself to become lost in his thoughts. Dropped off into half-focused memories of green leaves and vines and moss; young faces that were no longer young, or that would be forever young; the smell and sounds of the vegetation that was their friend and foe; the crack of rifle fire; the burning sulfur of tracer bullets. 

He sometimes wondered if he still lived in that jungle. It he carried it with him in all times and places. If the stench of the rotting vegetation and the humid oppression surrounded him always -- keeping him apart, separate. Was it in the jungle that he had lost Sharon?

He also wondered if the man who had emerged from that clearing--alive and eventually almost whole again -- was someone other than Walter S. Skinner. He had been dead and completely reborn, but someone had forgotten to tell him who he now was.

He only knew that he was forever looking behind, back into that clearing, as though it held the only answers worth knowing.

God, he was getting maudlin. It was time to do something else. Drinking this early had probably been a mistake, but he hadn't been able to figure out what else to do. He knew only that he couldn't go to the damn Wall.

There was a time for the Wall. There were times when it drew him like no other place on earth. Usually at night. Always alone. He would stand in that deep, sheltering granite V and listen to the ghosts. Would feel them entombed in the earth, would feel them waiting for him.

But on this day, he felt like an imposter there. He had died, but not died, and the ghosts at the Wall would not recognize him.

He left money on the table to cover his drinks and walked out of the bar. The afternoon had turned cloudy, giving the street and buildings a muted tone. It suited his mood. He closed his leather jacket and tried to decide what do next.

There was no place that didn't feel like a booby trap -- Arlington Cemetery, the Iwo Jima Monument -- nothing felt right. But he needed to move, to walk. He set out, not really knowing where he was going, and found himself back at his car before he knew it.

He made a decision.

 

Great Falls Park was inside the Beltway, but it was a small oasis of wilderness and nature in the midst of the urban sprawl nightmare that DC had become. He parked his car and noted gratefully that the place was nearly deserted. 

The trails were empty, and he set out on the one that would take him to the overlook point of the rapids. The Potomac here was free and untamed, hurtling over the falls, creating white water runs that kayakers dared in slightly calmer times. Not today, though. Today, under the grey skies, with the water level high and rough, there was nothing confronting the sheer power of nature.

He stood on the precipice for a while, simply listening to the sounds of the rapids, rushing by him, under him. Listening to the water washing away....away.

It was mesmerizing, soothing. It reminded him that there were things that were uncontrollable, and that existed not to be understood, but simply to be. He felt his gut begin to unknot. 

Maybe he'd get through this day after all.

After a small eternity, he decided to hike over to the overlook just around the bend of the river. Arriving at the boulder configuration where he'd planned to sit for a while, he was startled to find another hiker already perched atop the plateau. He was even more startled to realize that it was Dana Scully.

She hadn't heard him approach -- the path here was nothing but rock, and as always he'd walked noiselessly, a silent patrol stalk that he had never shaken.

He watched her for a long moment. She sat with her knees hugged to her chest. Her gaze was focused out across the water, but he didn't think she was seeing anything in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

He shrugged. Today was a day for simply following his instincts. He walked closer and cleared his throat, pulling her attention back to the here and now.

"Assistant Director Skinner?" Her formality, in this setting seemed both fitting and odd.

"Scully."

She was clearly disoriented. Trying to figure out what to say. He walked a little nearer and gestured, "May I?"

She looked down, almost as though she expected to see something other than rock next to her, maybe a sofa or a bench. Her expression was bemused as she looked back up at him. "Sure."

He settled himself on the rock near her. Not touching, but close enough that they could talk without raising their voices.

But it would seem that Scully was not in a mood to converse much. She turned her attention back to the water, and Skinner could almost feel her withdrawing somewhere deep inside again. 

They sat in peace for a long time, until finally her quiet voice broke the stillness. "What are you doing out here, Sir?"

"Seems more like a question I should be asking you, I think?" He was surprised to hear real humor in his tone.

She cocked her head to the side and met his gaze for a moment. "You ordered us to take leave after our last case, remember?"

"Oh, right." He looked away, feeling slightly foolish. 

A comfortable silence was re-established between them. It surprised him to find himself so at ease with Scully. But she exuded an air of calm concentration that seemed to come from the very center of her being.

The sky turned even more cloudy and grey. He wondered idly if it were about to rain. There would be a certain appropriateness if it did.

Finally her voice pulled him out of the reverie into which he'd sunk. "So, what are you doing here?"

How to answer that question? It was the question he'd been trying to answer all day. What was he doing here? Why, of all of his comrades-in-arms, was he the only one here today?

He sighed quietly.

"I took the day off."

"Uh huh." Her voice betrayed neither amusement nor inquiry. Simply a quiet, acceptance.

And then, abruptly, he found himself saying, "You know that I served in Vietnam?"

He was staring out over the water, but felt her sitting up a bit straighter, turning toward him.

"Yes." Her voice was hushed, controlled.

"I joined at 18. I was...young, naive, a little arrogant. Thought I really understood what Justice was. What Truth was. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found in those jungles."

For a moment the jungle swallowed him whole again. He was back on patrol; feeling the insects devouring him in small snatches; aware of the sweat on his skin, pooling and running down his back; the weight of the rifle in hands. And fear, the constant of those days and nights. The fear that even in memory tightened his gut, notched up his breathing and raised his heart rate.

He wrenched himself from the poisonous verdant embrace of the jungle's vines, and turned to meet Scully's eyes briefly. She met his gaze evenly, no judgement, just patient understanding. He remembered that her father had been in the Navy -- had probably been to war. She shared that military tradition with him. But there was something more in her eyes. Some deeper understanding -- a look he'd only seen in the eyes of others who had been There.

He turned outward again.

"What I found in that jungle, Scully, was death. My own." For the first time he felt her start. It came to him that Mulder must not have told her about this. That the speech he'd made to Mulder to prevent him from resigning after Scully's return had never been repeated to her. He found himself silently thanking the rebel agent for his discretion.

"I died in Vietnam. Literally. We were out on patrol, and the Viet Cong came out of nowhere. My entire company was killed. All of us. I died in a Viet Cong ambush 26 years ago today. I was there -- watching my own body, watching them strip off my uniform, take my weapon. I saw myself being put into a body bag....

"I was dead. But then I woke up in that hospital, and I wasn't dead." He closed his eyes, seeing nothing but green -- green jungle, green uniforms, green hospital gowns. "So, in all honesty, I really can't tell you why I'm here."

He fell silent, amazed that he'd told her. He sat waiting for her reaction, wondering what it would be -- a qualified disbelief, a polite bemusement. 

Waited.

Her voice was level when she finally replied. "Do you remember that case Mulder and I investigated a couple of years ago where psychics were being killed?" It was not anything he had expected.

He found himself desperately searching his memory at the same time that a small part of him wondered where this was leading; why she brought this up now, in response to what he'd just told her.

There was a certain relief in escaping into the exercise of case file memories. "Yes. Wasn't that the case where Mulder thought he'd found a genuine psychic...someone who could predict how and when people would die?"

A wry smile graced her features for a moment. "Yeah. Clyde Bruckman. He committed suicide the same night we caught the killer." The memory seemed peculiarly bittersweet to her. But there was a calm serenity to her voice and to her very being that reached out to him, that began to seep past the vines that ensnared him.

"I'm not prone toward believing that sort of thing, you know." He nodded mutely, unable to find words.

"But that was one of those cases that really shook me up." The admission seemed to trouble her slightly. She sounded almost defensive as she continued.

"He....well....he seemed to see things that there was no way for him to have seen.

"The night that I had the watch on him, he kept teasing me about didn't I want to know how I would die? Given what he'd said to Mulder earlier, I wasn't inclined to take him too seriously. But finally, right as the relief shift arrived, I gave in and I asked."

She turned slightly, meeting his gaze fully, watching him for a long minute, almost as though trying to read him. To see the hour of his death. But her tone when she finally continued was gentle, and her words were so very unexpected.

"And when I did finally ask, he gave me this...this smile. And then he simply said, 'you don't.'"

She paused, letting him absorb the apparent paradox. "And I didn't, you know. At least not this time, and I should have. I've seen the tests. The cancer _had_ me. I wonder if that was what he was trying to tell me."

She drew a deep breath, but she was still smiling slightly. "Maybe death is more elusive for some of us than for others." She watched him for a long moment and then looked away, lost somewhere between time and place.

"I used to think that he'd said that to me just to spare my feelings. But suddenly today, I heard his words again, and started thinking about them in the context of all that happened, and thinking about when...I was returned...

"I nearly died then, too, I know. While I was in that coma, I experienced something that I've never been able to explain. I was on this boat...drifting, but tied to a dock that I could  
sometimes see people standing on." Her voice drifted, floating out over the water, almost lost.

"I think Mulder was there sometimes. And that Nurse. I was very safe on that boat. Comfortable. Connected by that rope -- just drifting...waiting." She paused so long that he thought she'd forgotten he was there.

"But the rope broke. It simply frayed and snapped and there was nothing left anchoring me at all." She turned to meet his eyes. Holding him there with nothing but her lucid gaze.

"I think that was a form of death, but I didn't die. Then. Or now." She reached over and placed her hand on his arm, her touch so light that it almost didn't register. "But, we have died, haven't we?"

"I came out here today, because I was feeling like a ghost again. Trying to figure out why I was here -- if I was here at all. That's what it leaves you with, isn't it? The sense that nothing matters and at the same time that everything matters, because maybe you don't exist." Her smile was wry.

He shivered almost imperceptibly, as he answered her. "Yes -- that's it. Every year on this day, I can't help but wonder..."

"Why? How?"

"Exactly."

Unexpectedly she graced him with a brilliant, open smile. "I think it doesn't matter. What we've experienced is beyond any why or how. That's what I realized today. I could choose to spend the rest of my life asking exactly those questions, and on some level I suppose I will. But I've been given back my life. You were given back your life. We have, it seems, no choice but to *live,* and that is the answer."

Her hand pressed down gently, grounding him. Her light touched warmed him, as impossible as that was through the layers of his jacket.

"I could choose to live on that boat in the lake, but it's time to come to shore. The boat will be there when I need it." She searched his eyes. "You could live in that jungle clearing, but maybe you need to leave it for a while." Her voice was nearly a whisper, but her intensity and empathy were unmistakable. "It will be there. It will wait."

He drew a sharp breath. How had she known? Could she see the jungle surrounding him? Feel it at his back? He started to shake his head, to deny it....and suddenly the jungle released him. He stepped out of the clearing for a final time. He did not look back.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the X-Files are the property of Ten-Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting. No infringement is intended.
> 
> Author's Thanks: to Meredith, who always asks the right questions


End file.
